Mrs Coulter
by Lunlar
Summary: The story of a young woman who has everything she wants in the fashionable world of Oxford - money, power and a husband who can get her more of both - but who is tempted to risk her glamourous, glitzy lifestyle for a Lord who simply cannot let her go.
1. Chapter 1

Both woman and daemon were still. She, indeed, was so still that she looked dead. Her lips were open slightly and her eyes, intense and burning, were distant and unfocused. She had not changed, just gone upstairs and let down her hair and now sat on the edge of the vast bed, laid with a deep-gold, satin throw that had been perfectly folded at the pillow to reveal a cream-peach, goose-feather duvet and thick pillows with embossed cases. The room was the very definition of finery; light-beach panelling, pine floor, hand-made, varnished dressing-table. The dressing-table was scattered with beauty implements; yet, it belonged to Mrs. Coulter, so there was somehow an elegance about the tossed-away clasp bag, embedded with black onyx gems, which had opened and was spilling a pearl-coloured powder puff, a small bottle of perfume with a spritz-top, a gold-rimmed lipstick tube and an ebony-coloured purse that matched the bag.

A breeze blew the fine golden hairs of the monkey-daemon; a breeze that blew from an open set of intricately-made French doors that opened onto a small balcony. The balcony was framed by gold, swirly metal fencing and looked down upon a small courtyard that the house encased. A fountain of water splashed quietly from the mouth of a mermaid and stilled in the basin below, in which a constant pool of water drained out of the bottom to prevent the fountain from becoming dirty; a different tube pumped new water in, which travelled up through the stone to the mouth of the mermaid, who spat it out continuously.

She was sick of it. She was sick of the noise of the fountain - she felt she could sympathise with the mermaid. A beautiful decoration shipped in to just sit and look pretty and spout rubbish.

In truth, she was sick of the whole lifestyle. Her husband led a life of luxury; money was his answer for everything and he used it to his best advantage. Money had bought him the stunning, clever, sharp lady he met, quite by accident, on the street. Money had bought him his huge, sought-after, disgustingly expensive Oxford townhouse and money had bought him a social status that had caused him to mostly live _away _from this splendid house and instead live in London, in his more modest town mansion. Marisa was proud of herself, certainly, but Edward had been her big disappointment.

She wasn't a romantic; she had realised as a ten-year old that she wasn't good enough to find herself a husband that would love her. Love, she had realised at age thirteen, was a simpering, weak excuse for a human longing to be loved; nobody stuck together through thick and thin, nobody would give up riches for a life with their poor love. And if they did, they would die unhappy. She also knew that the only way she would ever find herself in an admirable position would be to be a conniving, scheming, manipulative bitch. She would have to obey and fake and do things that she didn't even want to think about. She would have to act like a whore, a lady and a thief, and it would be difficult. But she made herself a promise, and she never went back on it. She loved power; everybody did, even if they tried to hide it. Everybody wanted to be the best, everybody wanted to be the hero.

And she had done it. She had risen through the ranks; she had started at the worst and she was at the best she could be.

But she hated it.

Knowing she was a pretty pet hadn't bothered her at first. People still took her seriously; she was Mrs. Coulter; she was one of the most powerful and forceful women people had come across. Edward was proud of her; she hated him.

She also admired him. She told him so, and he told her, truthfully, that he admired her back. Their relationship was an odd one; she knew this herself. She wasn't content, exactly… she was more or less satisfied. For now. And she knew that there wasn't anything better.

"Marisa?"

She jumped slightly. Goose-bumps prickled on her arms and the fine golden hairs stood up. Edward stood at the door of the room, looking at her. She smiled graciously.

"Those at the Institute – the men especially – were glad to hear you would be coming tomorrow. Tell me, Marisa, what exactly do you talk about with them?" his voice was hard, arrogant.

"Politics, Edward. What you talk about – money…power."

His daemon, a lithe jaguar named Siffarin, looked the golden monkey up and down and settled on the floor next to the bed, the plush fur of the rug making Edward go slightly drowsy immediately. He shed his jacket – he wore a suit every day – and gave it to Marisa. She eyed him coldly as he turned away to loosen his collar fussily, and dropped it onto one of the bedposts. He didn't notice.

Marisa held out her arms to her daemon, but Edward stepped in the way and the monkey fell back. His little eyes glinted blackly, but he dropped onto the floor at the opposite side to the jaguar. Edward gathered Marisa in his arms and kissed her roughly; she pushed away.

"Not tonight, Edward."

"What?" his eyes had hardened and narrowed. "What do you mean, 'not tonight'?"

She had turned away from him. The breeze from the balcony pushed against her dress and hair, and it irritated her, so she shut the doors quietly and locked them with a little ornate key.

She turned; Edward was waiting, expectant.

With an inward sigh of hate and disgust, she padded over to him and turned her back. He reached up and laid his hands on her back. She wasn't soothed, and he knew it. He sighed and raised his hands to pull the delicate material taut; with his other hand, he took ahold of the tiny zip and slowly slipped it downwards.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The dimmed anbaric lights in the room glinted slightly on the fine golden hairs of the sleeping monkey daemon. His little head rested on the side of the bed, his body in a tight ball, his face a perfect mask of disgust, a scowl resting on his slight features. Edward, who was ignorantly sleeping, rolled over slightly, pushing up against the monkey's human, causing the little monkey to start and leap up, pushing up off his hind legs and landing lightly on the bedspread in a reflex action. Mrs. Coulter, who had been lying as if asleep, her eyelids closed over the dark depths of her irises, immediately opened her eyes and glared at her daemon, somehow sleepily yet sharply annoyed. "What are you doing?"

She whispered, although she knew Edward would not wake until a half-hour past six in the morning exactly. Her daemon's movement irritated her; it meant she herself was jumpy and tense, which was weakness, as far as she was concerned. She had nothing to feel anxious about. There was no point in worrying; it got you nowhere. Her daemon, she reflected as he dropped off the bed and onto the floor once more, often gave her real feelings away. He was a nuisance sometimes. Through his resentment, she felt her daemon's hurt, and a large amount of maliciousness. Where would she be without him? She would have got nowhere; he was her clever, cruel other half, and he had made them rise in the world. Why, it was his golden fur that had started all this; did she not see that? He reached up his tiny monkey arms and she lowered her arm off the bed for him to grab. She lifted him up onto the bed and he crawled into a niche the thick duvet made in the back of her knees. She sighed. He was right. Separated, they would be brilliant – although she shivered at that thought – but together, they were the best.

They fell into a fitful sleep. Marisa's fitful sleeps were more or less invisible to the outsider; her monkey often twitched, but she herself didn't move an itch. She didn't sweat, or make any noise, or move, but dreams were the only thing that really terrified her. With a mind like hers – full of cunning, cleverness, horrors, experience and imagination – horrific nightmares came hand in hand. Edward chased her hungrily through the Institute, professing his deep desire to eat her bit by bit, as well as her daemon. She ran, but her dress kept getting caught up in her legs, and her shoes were too high; she stopped to rip them off and threw them at him; he fell and blood spurted out of his mouth, his nose, his eyes, it flooded out of his shirt and his shoes and flowed out of the bottom of his trousers. She screamed and ran, and there were doors ahead of her which banged open. Outside stood the huge buildings of the Magesterium, and beyond, a black sky that streamed with colours; it was as if somebody had taken a paint-brush and thrown paints all over an ebony-black canvas; pinks like those huge, magnificent, full-bloom roses she had once seen in a garden behind a white fence, greens that made her think of limes, leaves, trees, grass… a hesitating swirl of light that all twirled down to a single point. That point was a man standing in front of the doors of the Magesterium, his arms outstretched, throwing golden sparkles from his hands and shooting them towards the doors of the Magesterium. She wanted to speak to him; he was important; he needed to turn so she could see his face; Edward had disappeared, he was irrelevant… a bloodstain on the carpet and she would never care about him again; she had never loved him… she stepped forward, and tripped into a vast black abyss, and she knew somehow that she would fall forever.

--

She awoke, sweating, and a tiny cry escaped from her lips. She was so shocked and outraged that she slapped a hand over her own mouth, and her chest heaved from the sobs that longed to escape. The sheets cooled as she struggled with her own horror. Her daemon crawled over the mess of duvet and timidly wrapped his arms around her neck. She lifted him as soon as she felt that she had controlled herself. It only now seemed important to check Mr. Coulter had gone to work; indeed, he had; the gold-plated clock that ticked heavily and annoyingly on the far wall told her he had left an hour or so before. The fact that the dream had scared her so much unnerved her. She didn't react to nightmares usually; she had herself trained.

Leaving the sheets in a tangled mess, she slipped out of her bed and retrieved her pearl-silk robe. Her daemon fastened it, his little black hands working the knots skilfully, as she unlocked the balcony doors and pulled them open. A warm summer breeze lifted her hair off her face and knotted itself silkily through the hairs of the golden daemon; both closed their eyes for a mere second to savour the feeling, and then both heard the splashing water from the mermaid fountain, and were immediately feeling riled.

"Let's turn it off," Mrs. Coulter suggested quietly. She hooked the iridescent curtains in the curly golden holder and brushed her hair quickly before stepping out of the bedroom into the corridor. As she descended down the main stairs, her hand sliding down the polished banister, the smell of breakfast wafted into her nostrils; she breathed it in deeply. Her daemon, still hanging round her neck, was trying to ask her about the nightmare. But she didn't want to think about it. She had never reacted in that way to a dream before; this was something new entirely. But she didn't want to look out of sorts in front of anybody, even the servants. So she blocked her daemon out and he eventually stopped trying to communicate with her, sullenly hanging round her neck, annoyed that he had been quietened so easily, but knowing she would not change her mind. Until she was ready, that is.

"Elizabeth?" Mrs. Coulter called as she descended the last step and made her way towards the kitchen, her bare feet making no sound on the shining floor tiles. Elizabeth emerged out of the kitchen ahead of her, her face worried for being in the kitchen, gossiping with the cook and flirting with the errand boy. Elizabeth was pretty shrewd for a maid; she knew that Mrs. Coulter knew everything that went on in her house. But Mrs. Coulter didn't look angry; she looked slightly younger than she normally did. In fact, she looked ever so slightly scared and alone. As soon as she saw Elizabeth her face hardened; she nodded and said, in a voice that warned Elizabeth not to ask, "Which dress should I wear today, to the Institute?"

Elizabeth surveyed her mistress with a professional eye. She looked pale and rather virginal today. "I will go and pick something out, Miss. Maybe the sea-foam silk…"

"Perhaps," Mrs Coulter said, uninterestedly. "Elizabeth, could you see somebody about that fountain in the courtyard? It's on all night. Could you get it turned off?"

"Just turned off at night, ma'am?"

There was a pause. "No. All the time. It could do with a clean."

"Certainly, ma'am."

--

The dress Elizabeth had picked out for her was ivory, with beading from the bottom, in a triangle shape to the bustier, and thin straps. She had always been thin to the point of unhealthiness. Her belly didn't even protrude from the tight silk. Her hips gave her a figure and she knew how to make the most of her chest. As Elizabeth wetted her fingers and twisted Mrs. Coulter's blonde ringlets into perfect spirals, Mrs. Coulter's mind drifted to the dream she had had earlier. The thought of it still made her shiver slightly. Her daemon was crawling delicately across the dressing table, his delicate little black claws clicking on the polished wood top as he picked up her clasp bag and felt inside for the powder puff. He expertly made up her face, his little black eyes beady as he brushed the puff over her pale skin and continued with her make-up. She stared over her daemon's head at the mirror as Elizabeth gently fastened her hair in place with a gold clasp and loosened a few strands. Mrs. Coulter dismissed her and took over from the monkey as it scampered across the room and into the closet. She called instructions to him; he hurried out with a wispy, dark-gold travelling cloak and tied the ribbon at her neck. Just as she had pressed her lips together to perfect her lipstick, Edward entered the room and loosened his tie, throwing it on the bed before disappearing into the closet to choose a more formal one.

"What jewellery are you wearing?" he asked her, through the open door. Marisa paused in surveying her satin glove collection and consulted her daemon.

"I don't know, something gold. Are you going to pick it?"

He came back through the door, nodding as he fiddled with his tie. Neatening his jacket, he leaned over near her shoulder and closed his eyes to inhale her perfume. Something stirred inside him, but he was a controlled man, and so he ignored it. Instead, he picked fussily through her jewellery drawers until he laid down a delicate pearl-bead bracelet and modest earrings. He moved behind her and swung his arms over her head to rest a pearl necklace around her neck. It came to just before the bottom of her armpits. He tied the white ribbon at the back and, before he could say anything, she plucked a pair of pearl-white gloves from her glove drawer and slipped them on. They both stepped back to survey her.

"You look beautiful," he told her, and he meant it, because he didn't lie to flatter or please. She smiled.

"Thank-you."

He stared at the necklace for a second longer and then turned to make his way out of the door.

"We'll be late, Marisa. Come, and remember, you are a married woman now."

"What precisely does that mean, Edward?" Marisa said icily, as she followed her husband out of the room, her monkey following her as she closed the door.

"Don't act as if you aren't already taken to make yourself feel more desirable," he snapped. "The men at the Institute will not appreciate you being all over them."

They had begun to descend the stairs when she said, "Oh, stop lying to yourself, Edward. I am not outward or obvious. Do not make me out to be some sort of whore, because I am not. If men want me, then they can want me. As you say, I'm married. Nobody could tempt me to do something unacceptable or out of society's boundaries. Ever."


End file.
